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By Paul Blythe The threat that Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis pose to democracy in the United States is real and becoming starker by the day. That much we’ve known for a while, but the really bad news of late is that potentially any of the Republican presidential candidates in 2024, if elected, could be just as dangerous for the future of democratic government. The New York Times reported last week (July 17) about how Trump, his campaign advisors and a network of conservative groups led by the Heritage Foundation are preparing policies and personnel lists to concentrate far more power directly in his hands by “increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.” In other words, as historian Heather Cox Richardson said in a July 18 essay giving the news story some context, The Times “outlined how former president Donald Trump and his allies are planning to create a dictatorship if voters return him to power.” What’s more, Trump and his advisors aren’t even trying to hide their authoritarian plans. According to The Times , they are proclaiming in rallies and on his campaign website their intentions to: Bring independent agencies such as the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission under direct presidential control, eliminating current congressionally approved checks and balances that prevent the president from using the agencies to go after enemies or rewards supporters. Revive the practice of “impounding funds,” which is a president’s refusal to spend money Congress has appropriated for the purpose that Congress intended it for. Congress banned, or at least severely regulated, that presidential practice with the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 , but Trump did it anyway in his first (and only) term when he froze security assistance to Ukraine unless Ukrainian President Zelensky announced investigations into Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden, and his son. Strip employment protections from career civil servants, which would make Trump’s partisan and revenge purges far easier. As Richardson noted, “ Trump’s desire to grab the mechanics of our government and become a dictator is not new; both scholars and journalists have called it out since the early years of his administration.” DeSantis' imperial ambitions Meanwhile, we at the North County Democratic Club have on several occasions previously pointed out DeSantis’ imperial ambitions as Florida governor through, among other things, his use of governmental power to repress and persecute political opponents , his manipulation of media for his own propaganda goals, and his administration’s extreme rightwing makeover of education in the state including everything from increased book banning in public schools to a crackdown on academic freedom in colleges . But he made his authoritarian bent crystal clear in his presidential campaign announcement May 24 on a Twitter Spaces livestream better remembered for its technical glitches. In the announcement, DeSantis laid out his presidential vision to out-Trump Trump by gutting the administrative state and grabbing more power for the chief executive. “There’s a lot that the executive branch can do, and all I will say when it comes to these agencies [is] … buckle up when I get in there, because the status quo is not acceptable, and we are going to make sure that we reconstitutionalize this government,” he said. DeSantis, who has consistently overstepped his powers as governor in Florida (for example, by forcing the Florida Senate to accept a congressional districts map in 2022 that was more partisan than the one the Senate had drawn based on the state’s Fair Districts Amendments), went on to explain how he fully intends to do the same thing if elected as president. “I understand the different leverage points that you would have under Article Two of the Constitution. I studied that a lot, becoming governor, about Florida’s constitution,” he said. “Doing the same thing for the federal Constitution, and you’ve got to know how to use your leverage to advance what you’re trying to accomplish.” In other words, he’s already telling us he’ll find ways to sidestep constitutional restraints on presidential power. A day later, on The Mark Levin Show, DeSantis made his ambition for power even more explicit. “You also have to be willing to assert the true scope of Article Two powers,” he said on the conservative radio show, “and I think a lot our presidents have not be willing to do that.” Remarkably similar, don’t you think? Trump’s and DeSantis’ craving for power and their visions for taking it. Get rid of all the career employees who know what they’re doing and really care about government. Ignore the Constitution where it grants powers to Congress, such as the power of the purse in Article One and the power to decide who appoints some department heads in Article Two. Claim that Article Two essentially gives the president any power he wants. Republicans' Project 2025 But the really scary thing, according to The New York Times story, is that the Trump campaign/Heritage Foundation blueprint for a Republican presidential administration could become a thing even if neither Trump nor DeSantis wins. Could define the philosophy and personnel of a Republican administration if any of the party’s candidates were to win. That’s because the plan, a $22 million presidential transition operation known as Project 2025, is being recommended by the project partners to any Republican running in the 2024 election. According to an April 20 Times story , Heritage and its project partners had already briefed Trump, DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Vice President Mike Pence at that time. And they planned to give private briefings to all conservative candidates. Like we said earlier, making the authoritarian agenda public is part of the Trump-Heritage strategy. “Our current executive branch was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul,” John McEntee, a former Trump White House personnel chief now working on Project 2025, told The Times . Talking openly about such “paradigm-shifting ideas” allows the campaign to “plant a flag” to shift the debate, at least among Republicans, and to later be able to claim a mandate, Russell T. Vought, another Trump White House department head now working on Project 2025, also told The Times . The strategy might be working. Vought – who ran the Office of Management and Budget in Trump’s White House and now runs the Center for Renewing America, a conservative policy organization – said he was pleased to see so few Republican candidates defend the norm of Justice Department independence after Trump openly attacked the long-established tradition of presidents keeping their hands out of Justice Department investigations. Last month Trump vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden and his family if he is returned to the presidency. The Times then asked his Republican rivals what limits there are or should be on presidents interfering with federal law enforcement decisions. Only Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, two former U.S. attorneys who both are seeking votes from anti-Trump moderate Republicans, unequivocally said presidents should not direct investigations or prosecutions of individuals. While DeSantis did not answer the specific question about investigations of individuals, he did say “the fundamental insight” he gleans from the Constitution is that the Justice Department and FBI are not “independent” from the White House and that the president can lawfully exert direct control over them. Pence’s spokesman said Pence believes the DOJ has some independence in prosecutorial matters but did not elaborate. And the other candidates generally gave vague answers about imposing justice impartially while also accusing the current Justice Department of targeting Republicans for political reasons, although most did not point to a basis for those accusations, The Times said. Embracing antidemocratic ideology Richardson, the Boston College history professor who publishes her “Letters from an American” essays on Substack.com, also offered some general analysis of this and of how the Republican leaders’ planned overhaul of American government indicates they appear to have fully embraced an authoritarian, antidemocratic ideology. “Because all the institutions of our democracy are designed to support the tenets of democracy, right-wingers claim those institutions are weaponized against them,” she wrote in her July 18 essay. “House Republicans are running hearings designed to prove that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice are both ‘weaponized’ against Republicans. It doesn’t matter that they don’t seem to have any evidence of bias: the very fact that those institutions support democracy mean they support a system that right-wing Republicans see as hostile.” Of course, the real, underlying danger to American democracy is not just that most Republican politicians have embraced, or at least accepted, the anti-democratic (some would call it fascist) form of government pushed by Trump and DeSantis, but that a sizeable portion of Republican voters – the MAGA voters – have. That big chunk of voters is what is keeping the likes of Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, as well as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Ohio Sen. JD Vance, in lockstep with the Trump-Heritage network. That, and the financial support of the very rich, corporate backers of the Heritage Foundation network, who want to maintain their oligarchic influence on the federal government through business-friendly laws and court decisions like Citizens United. These Republican mealy-mouths are followers, not leaders, whose ambition nevertheless outstrips their democratic principles. So, what do we do? If we want to keep democracy, then we speak out against this new American fascism and we promote Democratic policies and candidates to everyone we encounter. Starting now. Promote and vote Democratic.

Protecting Freedom (FPF) is a statewide campaign of allied organizations and concerned citizens working together to protect Floridians’ access to abortion as reproductive health care and defend the right to bodily autonomy. FPF recognizes that all Floridians deserve the freedom to make personal medical decisions, including about abortion, free of government intrusion. If you are registered to vote in Florida, you can fill out, print, and mail in your own petition form! You can also get friends and family to sign petitions too. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT FULL TEXT Ballot Title: Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion Ballot Summary: No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. This amendment does not change the Legislature’s constitutional authority to require notification to a parent or guardian before a minor has an abortion. Article and Section Being Created or Amended: Creates - Article 1, New Section Full Text of the Proposed Amendment: New Section, Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion Limiting government interference with abortion .— Except as provided in Article X, Section 22, no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE JOIN OUR COLLECTION TEAM

From the Palm Beach County Democratic Black Caucus "Black History Celebration" luncheon What it was all about “Building a modern, long-term political infrastructure succession plan … The strength of our movement in Palm Beach County depends on all of us working together.” -- Strategic plan description from the luncheon program Where it was at Boynton Beach , a city where the government is working for the people, Mayor Ty Penserga , one of a team of Democrats on the City Commission, bragged, pointing to affordable housing that the city is building in the Seacrest Boulevard-Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard corridor. Words to get us going in the fight for Florida “Florida is the most controversial state in the union – except for Tennessee.” -- Florida Sen. Bobby Powell, West Palm Beach “What’s happening to this state is a disgrace. It’s shameful and … we have to fight back….The only thing that is going to free us is ourselves.” -- U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, West Palm Beach; recipient of the Alcee Hastings and John Lewis Trailblazer Award “We survived slavery. We survived Jim Crow. You telling me we can’t beat this little pipsqueak in the governor’s office?” -- Chuck Ridley, Delray Beach community activist; recipient of one of the caucus’ Community Awards History lesson 1 – the one that choked us up “I had what I needed when I stepped on that campus.” -- The oft-repeated refrain of special speaker Yvonne Lee Odom, grandmother of tennis star Coco Gauff, who told her own remarkable story of how she, at age 15, integrated Seacrest High School in Delray Beach all by herself in September 1961 When the Palm Beach County School Board finally got around in September 1961 to implementing the U.S. Supreme Court’s B rown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, it evaluated students from Carver High, the Black school, looking for a star to be the first to go to Seacrest, the white school. Yvonne Lee adored Carver. She had amassed friends, played basketball and won “Miss Teen Town. She didn’t want to go to Seacrest but in September 1961, after she returned home from a Thursday night football game at Carver, her father, a minister, told her he had enrolled her at Seacrest because he thought she was the right person to go. “I had what I needed when I stepped on that campus.” When she informed her schoolmates at Carver, their reaction bolstered her. They also deemed her the right person, as a representative who would make them proud. “I had what I needed when I stepped on that campus.” On her first day, she was instructed to arrive at school hours after classes had started, and all the streets around the school had been blocked off to prevent any photos of a Black child integrating the school for whites. During her years at the school, she was called racial slurs and refused service at restaurants when she went to events with other students, but she remained outgoing and active in student life. “I had what I needed when I stepped on that campus … because of family support, school support, community support ... “When you are intentional about doing the right thing, it will always come out.” History lesson 2 – the one that ticked us off “Accurate teaching of African American history will make Black folk better, not bitter.” -- Sen. Bobby Powell on the DeSantis administration's elimination of College Board’s Advanced Placement course on African American History from Florida’s high school curriculum History lesson 3 -- the one we will make happen Sen. Powell’s speech was bracketed at each end by strong statements about how race inevitably comes into play when Democrats say they are searching for a candidate who can win an election, so that a Black candidate always makes the short list for lieutenant governor but not always for governor: To start: “I was on the short list to be lieutenant governor in 2022 … one of the 18 people on the short list for lieutenant governor … I hate to tell you this, but more than Black people vote for me.” To end: “I promise you this, it may not be me, but there will be a Black candidate running for governor in 2026.” *** Thank you, Palm Beach County Democratic Black Caucus , for a Sunday afternoon of good food, friendship and inspiration!

Speakers Dr. Deanna Albert, Scott Hottenstein and Stephanie Vanos By Paul Blythe This spring, Florida’s Republican-controlled government overhauled and expanded the state’s school voucher program so that it will soon be able to give an $8,500-a-year voucher to any K-12 student in the state who wants one to help pay for private school or home schooling. The key thing to know about that, as The Palm Beach Post pointed out in an editorial Saturday , is: “The Legislature approved the measure – 83 to 27 in the House and 26 to 12 in the Senate – without giving much thought to costs or impact on Florida public schools.” We at the North County Democratic Club sponsored a forum last week where we and about 50 guests learned just how little Florida’s Republican lawmakers knew, or at least cared, about how much the expansion of private school vouchers would cost and hurt public school students and families in Florida. During the presentation Thursday by Scott Hottenstein and Stephanie Vanos, president and vice president of the Democratic Public Education Caucus of Florida, and Dr. Deanna Albert, a member of the caucus’ Legislative Committee, we learned that the new law passed by Republicans removes previous limits on who and how many private school students can get vouchers, allowing essentially any Florida household with a student in elementary, middle or high school to receive a school voucher containing the same amount of money their local public school would have received if they had attended. Vouchers for homeschoolers The voucher can be used to pay for private school tuition or, for the first time, homeschooling resources -- if the homeschooling parents agree to abide by state guidelines. The new law (HB 1) also creates "education savings accounts," which is where the voucher money is to be kept if a student is enrolled in a private school, religious school or approved homeschooling nonprofit program but the family does not need the money at the time it is received. Up to $24,000 can be saved in this account until it expires when a student turns 21, receives a high school diploma, or attends a public school, WUSF Public Media has reported . The new law allows the voucher money in these accounts to be spent on other approved, school-related expenses such as enrollment in college as a part of a dual-enrollment program, fees for standardized tests and other testing, individual classes at a public school, tutoring, and instructional digital materials and internet resources. Public school students, however, will not receive this so-called scholarship money, as it is the same amount that is allotted to public schools per student and some of the allowable expenses, such as enrollment in dual-enrollment classes, are already paid for by the state for public school students. A stipend of $8,500 a year per child may sound enticing, but not all private schools are equal and even the best are not the bargain that public schools are for students, parents, neighborhoods and democracy, Albert said. Unlike public schools, private schools are not required by the state to have certified professional teachers; academic achievement assessed through state tests; all students accepted regardless of special needs; full offerings of art, music and physical education; neighborhood locations; buildings that meet safety standards; and transportation provided to and from schools, a League of Women Voters of Florida flier points out. Public education essential Moreover, Albert said, our nation’s forefathers wrote that public education is the key to developing an informed citizenry that is so necessary to preserving a democracy. Florida’s constitution goes even further, with Article 9 – the “Education” Article – stating “ a paramount duty of the state (is) to make adequate provision for the education of all children residing within its borders” and requiring that “Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education.” Indeed, the great majority of Florida’s K-12 students – 87 percent – are educated in public schools. But the state's 13 percent private school attendance in 2021-22 exceeded the national average and was up from 10.6 percent in Florida a decade earlier. Could it be because Florida’s spending on public education continues to lag behind other states – it ranked 44th among the 50 states in per-pupil public school spending in 2023, according to worldpopulationreview.com – as the Republican lawmakers who have controlled Florida government for the past two decades have worked so hard to promote private school vouchers and charter schools as school choice. Illusion of choice Choice, of course, always sounds like a good thing. But is it? Especially since Florida’s universal vouchers, Hottenstein said, provide only the “illusion of choice.” For example, just because the state provides vouchers for students to attend private schools doesn’t mean private schools have to admit voucher students. Tuition for the best private schools is often beyond the reach of low and middle income families even when they have vouchers, and many high-quality private schools do not accept government-funded vouchers. Let's look at Palm Beach County's 137 private schools, which serve 29,302 students and have annual tuitions ranging from $9,075 to $37,000. Of the 137, only 111 accept vouchers, Hottenstein said. Of those 111, 56 percent are unaccredited, 47 percent are faith-based and 32 percent are explicitly in it for the money, he said, noting that they are for-profit businesses. Only 5 are non-profit and non-religious. Yet, Florida’s private school attendance has grown since Republicans began diverting more and more tax dollars from public to private education in 1999, essentially creating two parallel school systems by using vouchers as a government subsidy for their constituents: private schools, religious schools, homeschool organizations – and the organizations that make money from their oversight of Florida’s voucher programs. The money allocated by Florida for vouchers doesn’t all go to private schools. Since the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship was created in 2001, the state has outsourced its administration of voucher programs to non-profits called scholarship funding organizations. Under state law, these SFOs are allowed to keep up to 3 percent of all voucher dollars for administrative costs. Scholarship Funding Organizations According to the Florida Department of Education, two scholarship funding organizations – Step Up for Students and A.A.A. Scholarship Foundation-FL -- were approved to administer all of Florida’s voucher programs in 2022-2023. According to a League of Women Voters of Florida report issued in March 2021, Step Up administered 99% of the contributions that corporations made to Florida’s tax credit voucher program and took an administration fee of 2.5 percent to 3 percent of the contributions. Corporations receive a dollar-for-dollar credit against Florida taxes they owe for contributions they make to the tax-credit vouchers program. The cap on corporate contributions in 2020 was $874 million, which means a 2.5% fee would have paid Step Up nearly $21 million for in 2020, the LWV report says. Most of that went to an $18 million payroll for Step Up’s 265 employees tasked with tracking individual vouchers giving to parents for more than 1,800 private schools in Florida, according to the LWV report. This includes verifying that a student actually is enrolled when a school reports a voucher for that student. And in the past Step Up had to make sure families who were awarded vouchers met the income requirements. But even an $18 million payroll would leave $3 million for the non-profit to use to promote Florida’s tax credit voucher program to corporations, car dealers and other businesses eligible for the tax credit, as well as to market it to parents, the LWV report says. Step Up offers webinars and support systems to recruit parents and assist them in applying for scholarships. Through the years, Step Up also has organized large rallies in Tallahassee to bring thousands of students and parents to Tallahassee to lobby legislators to expand the program. That expansion of vouchers in general is what hurts, even threatens, Florida public schools, the NCDC's three speakers said. Money going to Florida Tax Credit Scholarships – Florida’s largest voucher program until the past year – is money that would have gone to Florida’s tax coffers if Florida hadn’t agreed to sacrifice it to the tax credit voucher program in 2001, but it is not necessarily money that would have been earmarked for public education. And money allocated to Florida’s Family Empowerment Scholarships, now the state’s largest voucher program, is money diverted directly from the public schools budget to private schools. The administration of the Family Empowerment vouchers also is outsourced by the state government to the SFOs, meaning organizations like Step Up also collect a portion of these tax funds. Anybody's guess So, the Legislature’s move this year to eliminate the voucher program’s enrollment and household income caps is expected to really hurt the public school system’s finances. But exactly how much the voucher expansion would cost public schools appeared to be anybody’s guess. No one knows how many students are going to switch from public to private schools, or even how many private school students will apply for vouchers. The House budget proposal estimated the voucher expansion would cost $209.6 million a year while the Senate’s estimate started at $646 million and rose to $2.2 billion by the 2023 legislative session’s end. Both chamber’s estimates were in addition to the $1.4 billion in education funding or lost tax income that pays for the more than 200,000 private school students who use Florida Family Empowerment or Florida Tax Credit vouchers now. Then there is the Florida Policy Institute’s estimate that the expansion will cost the state nearly $3 billion more in 2023-2024 than what it spends on vouchers now. Norin Dollard, senior policy analyst at the Florida Policy Institute, told the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on education , in April that i n just the past three years of DeSantis’ tenure, the percentage of state-formula funding redirected from public to private education has risen from 3 percent to 10 percent. Next year, she said, that could reach 30 percent, or $4 billion. “I don’t think I am being overly dramatic in saying it will fundamentally change public schools to have such a huge amount of funds diverted to private schools,” Dollard said of the new voucher law’s potential impact. The institute’s estimate was based on calculations of $1.9 billion for 219,017 students already in private schools but currently not eligible for vouchers either because their family income exceeded the program’s income cap or because they never previously attended public schools; $890 million for 104,477 public school students the institute forecasts will switch to private schools once the income cap is eliminated; and $85 million for 10,000 home-school students that the institute estimated would be eligible for vouchers. The new law actually allows up to 20,000 home-school students to get vouchers in 2023-2024 and up to 40,000 each subsequent year. So, the Florida Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research and policy organization, may have even been low-balling it. What did the Legislature do? And how much extra did the Legislature finally budget for the extra vouchers? Well, it did pass a record $26.7 billion education budget for 2023-24, which is $2.2 billion more for education than the Legislature budgeted for this school year. But that $2.2 billion extra is not for voucher expansion alone. About $252 million of it, for example, is designated for pay raises for teachers, according to the News Service of Florida . Keep in mind that the education budget funds the state’s charter schools as well as traditional public schools and, now, vouchers for any private school student or homeschooler who can use them. Only $350 million was set aside in the schools budget to help hedge against unanticipated expenses from the expansion of vouchers, the News Service of Florida story said. *** Dr. Deanna Albert is CEO of Educational Solutions & Resources, a Wellington-based consulting firm on educational issues and recently joined the Democratic Public Education Caucus of Florida Legislative Committee after serving as chair of the Palm Beach County Democratic Party Education Committee for four years. Stephanie Vanos and Scott Hottenstein are the founding officers of Help Out Public Education (HOPE), a non-partisan political committee focused on supporting pro-public education school board candidates and campaigns in Florida. Go to www.hope4fl.org

By Paul Blythe Whether you liken it to fascism or McCarthyism or something in-between, the pernicious use of governmental power to repress and persecute political opponents for exercising their right to freedom of speech is a real and continuing thing in Florida under Gov. Ron DeSantis. We have seen it in his ongoing political and legal battle with the Walt Disney Company, which began when DeSantis and his lockstep party retaliated against Disney for speaking out against the Republican-controlled Legislature’s Parental Rights in Education Act (HB 1557), a law opponents call the “Don’t Say Gay” law. We saw it in the 6-4 vote Wednesday (April 26) by New College’s Board of Trustees to deny five professors tenure even though, or more likely because, the five had been approved by New College’s previous president. The six who voted to deny tenure were led by trustees appointed by DeSantis this year for the express purpose of converting Florida’s progressive honors college to a public-school doppelganger of Hillsdale College, a private conservative Christian College in Michigan. And we are seeing it now in the DeSantis administration’s targeting of Leon County Superintendent of Schools Rocky Hanna for his public criticism of various policies of DeSantis, including the Don’t Say Gay law, the expansion of vouchers and the governor’s ban of mask mandates during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Tallahassee Democrat broke the news Thursday, April 27 , that Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. notified Hanna in early April that the state Department of Education decided it has probable cause for sanctions against Hanna’s Florida educator certificate. The DOE’s complaint lists five alleged violations, including that he failed in his role as superintendent to take “reasonable precautions” to distinguish his personal views from those of his school district, the Tallahassee Democrat story said. Moms for Liberty the catalyst? Hanna told the newspaper he first learned his “personal views” were under investigation when he received a letter from DOE on Christmas Eve. He said he believes the catalyst for the investigation was a letter from a parent to DeSantis asking the governor to remove Hanna from office. The parent, Brandi Andrews, who says in the letter she serves on the executive board of the Leon County chapter of Moms for Liberty, included with the letter three items written by Hanna in August 2022 – an excerpt from an email, a Facebook post and an op-ed in the Democrat – as examples of “issues we have with our local school board right here in Leon County.” The email, written by Hanna to his district faculty and staff at the start of this school year and in response to the Don’t Say Gay law, says in part, “‘You do you’! Continue to teach the standards just as you have always done and do not worry for one minute about naysayers politics and others who are trying to mislead people and control what you can and cannot say in your classroom.” In the DOE complaint, Diaz, the education commissioner, declared that Hanna’s “‘You do you’ opens the door to teachers imposing their own individual political and religious views on students and teachers failing to teach with fidelity to the Florida standards.” The Facebook post criticizes DeSantis for blaming the state’s teacher shortage on unions, saying, “This video is just another example of the governor and his propaganda machine disseminating misinformation and lies in order to create a false narrative of what is actually happening in our schools.” The op-ed piece also criticizes what Hanna calls the governor’s “negative propaganda war against our public-school system” while the governor and Republican lawmakers are at the same time expanding private school vouchers, which Hanna says are syphoning away public school dollars “to expand wealth and power for select individuals and private interests.” “Make no mistake about it, the aspersions directed at public schools is accelerating the rated by which the state education system becomes completely privatized,” says the opinion piece, which Hanna ends by urging readers to let their representatives know they also “stand for the sanctity of our public-school system.” Prosecutors also targeted If Hanna’s educator certificate is revoked, it likely will give DeSantis all he needs to remove Hanna from his elected office, not unlike what DeSantis did to Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren, a twice-elected Democrat who also publicly differed with DeSantis’ policies. Florida’s Constitution allows governors to suspend local elected officials for various reasons, including “malfeasance” or “neglect of duty,” that are more substantial than publicly criticizing the governor’s policies. DeSantis removed Warren from office after Warren signed a pledge along with 91 other prosecutors around the nation vowing t o “exercise our well-settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who seek, provide or support abortions,” even though DeSantis’ office found no evidence that Warren’s office failed to make such a prosecution or had committed any malfeasance or neglect, according to a New York Times report . The pledge came shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal right to an abortion, and Warren told a reporter in a televised report that the pledge should not be read as a blanket statement, as he would individually evaluate any cases that surfaced. Now, another Democratic state attorney is claiming that DeSantis’ administration also is targeting her simply because he disagrees with her. According to a Politico report , the governor’s general counsel, which also prepared the case to dismiss Warren, demanded Feb. 28 that Monique Worrell, the state attorney for Orange and Osceola counties, turn over emails, reports and documents related to Keith Moses, a 19-year-old charged with the murder of three people, including a television reporter, in Orlando. DeSantis had already criticized Worrell’s handling of previous juvenile arrests of Moses, who was on probation at the time of the Orlando killings. Worrell said in March she had complied with most of the request, but on Friday (April 28), Worrell issued a news release saying, “ It’s appalling to think that while Ft. Lauderdale was under water , the Governor had people fishing around Orange and Osceola Counties to see which cases he can single out from over 100,000 cases our office has processed since I have taken office, while he prances around Southeast Asia on his dilapidated presidential campaign tour. He seeks to exploit his political agenda against me, while seeking to use current and former employees of the State Attorney’s Office, as well as individuals like (Republican State Committeewoman) Debbie Galvin, as investigators seeking to gather evidence to build and justify a baseless case against a prosecutor he simply disagrees with politically,” according to the Orlando Weekly . Supporters of Hanna are speaking out against DeSantis' “retaliatory bullying” of Hanna and the others who have had the strength of their convictions to publicly disagree with the governor, and they are noting the similarities to the fear-baiting and political purges of U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy. “We can’t duck and cover when someone faces an ideologically-motivated attack,” Leon County commissioner Rick Minor tweeted . “Based on my reading of the situation, @LeonSchools Superintendent Rocky Hanna acted with integrity and in accordance with the values of the majority of Leon County’s voters. These types of ‘investigations’ evoke the worst excesses of 1950s McCarthyism. We can disagree about policy, but none of us should accept this type of retaliatory bullying from our state government.” *** Rick Minor is right. We can’t duck and cover any more. Let Gov. Ron DeSantis know you’re opposed to this 21st century McCarthyism by emailing him at GovernorRon.DeSantis@EOG.MyFlorida.com or calling him at 850-717-9337 or calling his chief of staff, James Uthmeier, at 850-717-9310. ALSO ABOUT DESANTIS What to do about Florida’s wannabe despot problem ? When state demonizes educators, we’re heading toward autocracy In bizzarro world of Florida, only hope is Democratic super effort

By Paul Blythe Book banning in schools was more widespread in Florida than any other state in the nation in the first semester of the 2022-2023 school year, a new PEN America study shows. Between July and December 2022, PEN America recorded 13 school districts in Florida banning books, the most of any state. And our so-called Sunshine State removed the second most books – 357 titles – of any state from its schools during that period, the study said. Overall, the study found instances of books being banned in 66 school districts in 21 states between July and December 2022. Florida, with 13 book-banning school districts, including Palm Beach County, was followed by Missouri with 12 districts, Texas with seven, and South Carolina and Michigan, each with five. Besides Palm Beach County, the Florida districts where books were banned in the first semester of this school year were Brevard, Broward, Clay, Escambia, Flagler, Hernando, Highlands, Lake, Manatee, Seminole, St. Lucie and Volusia counties. Texas school districts banned the most individual books during that time, with 438 titles banned, followed by the 357 in Florida, 315 in Missouri, and over 100 in both Utah and South Carolina. PEN America's series of reports This data was published April 20, 2023 as “Banned in the USA: State Laws Supercharge Book Suppression in Schools,” the third and latest installment of PEN America’s tally of books that have been banned from U.S. school libraries, classrooms and curriculums. PEN America – a non-profit literary organization that advocates for writers, literacy and free expression – started the study in 2021. In the first installment, Banned in the USA (April 2022) , it reported that book bans had occurred in 86 school districts in 26 states in the first nine months of the 2021-22 school year. For the period between July 2021 and March 2022, it found 1,586 cases of individual books being banned, including 1,145 unique book titles by 688 authors, 155 illustrators and 11 translators. Florida’s 204 bans in seven districts placed third in the nation for that period, behind Texas with 713 bans in 16 districts and Pennsylvania with 456 bans in nine districts. With additional reporting on the entire 12-month 2021-2022 school year, PEN America counted bans in 138 school districts in 32 states for the period of July 2021 to June 2022. That second report, Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools , listed bans of 2,532 individual books, including 1,648 unique book titles, affecting 1,261 authors, 290 illustrators and 18 translators. Florida’s 566 bans in 21 districts placed it second among states after Texas’ 801 bans in 22 districts. Censorship an organized effort . . . And growing PEN America's research makes it clear these are not just isolated, grassroots challenges to books by parents in different communities. Rather, they are part of an organized, national effort by conservative advocacy groups and state politicians. And the process behind book challenges and bans is growing and evolving. According to PEN America's most recent report: “During the 2021-22 school year, parent-led groups coordinated to advance book censorship. These groups pressured districts to remove books without following their own policies, even in some cases, removing books without reading them . That trend has continued in the 2022-23 school year, but it has also been supercharged by a new source of pressure: state legislation.” The states where bans were most prevalent in the first half of this school year -- Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina -- included those that had recently passed new laws dictating the types of books that can even be in schools and the types of policies districts must follow to review their collections. The implications of bans in these states are far-reaching, as their policies and practices are being modeled and replicated across the country, the report said. For the July-December 2022 period, PEN America found 1,477 instances of individual books banned, including 874 unique titles affecting 688 authors, 155 illustrators, and 11 translators. This represents an increase from the prior six months, January to June 2022, when 1,149 instances of book banning were recorded. Over 4,000 instances of banned books have been recorded since PEN America started tracking book bans in July 2021, affecting 2,253 unique titles. Overall, the bans affect 182 school districts in 37 states and millions of students. Of the 1,477 books banned between July and December 2022, 1,085 books, or 74%, were connected to organized efforts – either of advocacy groups, elected officials, enacted legislation or some combination of the three. Of those 1,085 organized efforts, 294, or 20 percent, were connected to advocacy groups. Moms for Liberty was the most influential of these advocacy groups, as it organized 170 book bans in North Dakota, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Florida. These accounted for 58 percent of all advocacy-led book bans in the country. Meanwhile, 372, or 25 percent, of the individual books banned nationwide during this period were connected to political pressure from elected or appointed officials. And newly enacted laws in Florida, Utah and Missouri accounted for 461 of the books banned during this period, or 31 percent. These states' new laws contain direct prohibitions on certain content in schools, specify new rules about how books need to be cataloged or new conditions under which they can be accessed, or threaten punishments for teachers, librarians and administrators if they provide students access to material deemed “harmful” or “explicit.” Florida passed laws doing each of the three. Chilling effect of vague legislation PEN America says such laws give administrators and other decision-makers incentives to take an overly censorious approach to the content, images and ideas available in classrooms and libraries. Vague language in the laws regarding how they should be implemented, as well as the inclusion of potential punishments for educators who violate them, have combined to yield a chilling effect, according to the group's most recent report. We saw this in Florida after the implementation of three laws passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022: HB 1557 , which bars instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade; HB 7 , which prohibits educators from discussing advantages or disadvantages based on race; and HB 1467 , which requires that schools must catalog every book on their shelves, including those found in classroom libraries. Due to the lack of clear guidance in the laws or from the state Department of Education, teachers, media specialists and school administrators proactively removed books from shelves, even though no specific challenges had been filed against the books, according to the most recent PEN America report, which cited the online newsletter, Popular Information . This was exacerbated in October 2022, when the Florida Board of Education implemented new rules that went beyond the language in the laws, to stipulate that teachers found in violation of these bills could have their professional teaching certification revoked, PEN America reported in 2022 . PEN America found that of the 1,477 ban cases between July and December 2022, 761 books, or 52%, were banned pending investigation, 25% (364 books) were banned in libraries and classrooms, 23% (345 books) were banned in libraries but not from classroom curricula, and less than half a percent (7 books) were banned only from use in classrooms. The organization included "books banned pending investigation" as a ban because such removals are counter to the procedural best practices recommended by the American Library Association and the National Coalition Against Censorship . Not only are books often removed from student access before due process of any kind is carried out, they are removed even before objections to them are checked for basic accuracy. Pen America says such investigations, which can drag on for months at a time, are happening more frequently as districts receive numerous book challenges and remove large lists of books from student access for indefinite periods of review because teachers, librarians and media specialists are intimidated by potential penalties included in new, untested laws and board of education regulations. For example, in Clay County, Florida, at least 100 books were pulled from access in the first half of the 2022-2023 school year, after challenges from one man, the president and founder of the Florida chapter of No Left Turn in Education, a right-wing educational group. In cases where investigations have concluded and particular titles have been further restricted or banned as a result, PEN America catalogs the ban under one of the other three categories. Other key findings PEN America's most recent study also found that of the 874 unique book titles banned between July and December 2022: 385 books, or 44%, include themes or instances of violence and physical abuse. This includes titles that have episodes of violence or physical abuse as a component of plot or discussion. 331, or 38%, cover topics on health and well-being for students, including content on mental health, bullying, suicide, substance abuse, sexual well-being or puberty. 264, or 30%, are books that include themes of grief and death or have a character death that is impactful to the plot or a character’s emotional arc. 260, or 30%, are books about race, racism, or feature characters of color. 229, or 26%, present LGBTQ+ characters or themes. Of note, within this category, 68 are books that include transgender characters, which is 8% of all books banned. 211, or 24%, detail sexual experiences between characters. 150, or 17%, mention teen pregnancy, abortion, or sexual assault. PEN America also notes that books are more frequently being labeled “pornographic” or “indecent.” Dozens of books were targeted for removal in the 2021-22 school year on the basis that they contained sexual content. But since last summer, this framing has become an increasing focus of activists and politicians to justify removing books. For example, a March 8, 2023 release from DeSantis’ office defending the education laws and rules passed during his administration, quotes him as saying, “ In Florida, pornographic and inappropriate materials that have been snuck into our classrooms and libraries to sexualize our students violate our state education standards. Florida is the education state and that means providing students with a quality education free from sexualization and harmful materials that are not age appropriate.” However, such framing usually does not meet well-established legal or even colloquial definitions of “pornography” and “obscenity.” As we explained in a previous story about book banning in Florida, the legal test for obscenity requires a holistic evaluation of the material. Over the last year, however, terminology such as “obscene,” “pornographic,” “harmful to minors,” and “sexually explicit” is being utilized in Florida’s and other states’ laws to restrict a range of content, including books on LGBTQ+ experiences, stories that include any sexual references and even sex education materials, PEN America's most recent report says. Books also are frequently targeted for short excerpts or even single images, without the holistic evaluation of entire texts that are necessary to understand their literary merits. And while DeSantis and his administration have defended Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act, as being based on age-appropriate education, the State Board of Education voted on April 19, 2023, to expand the law to all grades by prohibiting classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation through 12th grade. In defense of freedom to read Steps like that affirm PEN America’s contention that its data on book bans between July and December 2022 demonstrate how the movement to remove books from public schools is continuing to gain steam. And it says its preliminary tracking of the second half of the 2022-2023 school year suggests censorship efforts are still ramping up. Besides impeding students’ freedom to read and limiting students’ access to a diversity of views, this censorship movement places an increasing burden and cost on public schools, the organization says. PEN America urges that for the 2023-2024 school year, school boards and district administrators should consider the many reasons for including and celebrating books rather than restricting them. It also notes that a good resource in Florida for defending the freedom to read is the Florida Freedom to Read Project , which gives the even better recommendation of using Republicans' own Parental Rights law (HB 1557) to fight their book-banning movement. Florida Freedom to Read says, “Let’s flood” the email address that the Florida Department of Education created for reporting violations of parental rights with our own stories of how these new restrictions are unfair to our children, teachers and schools. Click here to assert your parental rights now. *** The North County Democratic Club believes that preserving a uniform, high-quality public school system matters as much as any issue in Florida today. Click here to reserve your spot at Moms for Sanity, a program we’re presenting on what parents need to know about book censorship, school vouchers and other legislation affecting your children’s education.

WHAT PARENTS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT SCHOOL VOUCHERS IN 2023 and other legislation affecting YOUR CHILD’S education Join Us for a Free Non-Partisan Forum: Exploring Quality Education - School Choice/Universal Vouchers and its effect on Public Education; Includes Discussion on Legislation affecting School Safety, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion May 11, 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM Gardens Branch Public Library ***Speakers are not paid for participation or sponsored by NCDC. **Disclaimer:Attendees of NCDC events participate at their own risk and should take all necessary precautions to ensure their own safety. North County Democratic Club and its members, officers, and organizers shall not be held liable for any accidents, injuries, or damages that may occur during the event.

By Paul Blythe The third civil rights group in less than a month has issued or called for a travel advisory warning its constituency to avoid travel to Florida because recent laws and policies put into place by the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis could put their safety, health and freedom at risk. The Florida Immigrant Coalition last week joined Equality Florida, the state’s largest LGBTQ civil rights group, and the NAACP in warning that “traveling to Florida is dangerous” and cautioning those who do travel here to “make a clear safety plan.” “Reconsider travel to Florida due to unconstitutional laws which abuse civil liberties,” the Florida Immigrant Coalition’s advisory said. Click here to see the Florida Immigrant Coalition advisory . Equality Florida’s advisory, also issued last week, warns that “Florida may not be a safe place to visit or take up residence” due to “laws that are hostile to the LGBTQ+ community, restrict access to reproductive health care, repeal gun safety laws and allow untrained, unpermitted carry (of firearms), and foment racial prejudice.” The advisory also says, “The Governor has also weaponized state agencies to impose sanctions against businesses large and small that disagree with his attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Click here to see the Equality Florida advisory . The NAACP Florida State Conference voted unanimously on March 24 to ask its national Board of Directors to issue a travel advisory urging the nation’s Black community to avoid visiting or moving to Florida. The recommendation will be reviewed by the board in May. NAACP leaders cited the DeSantis administration’s attacks against teaching Black history in Florida public school, including stopping the teaching of the Advanced Placement Black History course in public high schools. “Any location in America where our history has been erased does not offer us, or our children, a bright future,” Board Chairman Leon W. Russell said in a statement released by the NAACP. Click here to see the NAACP’s advisory recommendation . DeSantis and his press secretary, Bryan Griffin, have called the advisories “political stunts,” according to several news outlets, including USA Today and the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel .

By Paul Blythe Florida Republicans’ universal education voucher program is already weakening the public education system, and the state has not even started dispensing the universal vouchers yet. School boards in Florida must adopt a final budget by early September each year for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. And they usually have enough of an idea of how much money they will get from the Legislature and property taxes to start planning their operating budgets and capital budgets. But this year, the Florida House and Senate are so far apart on how much of state public education funds must go to pay for the expanded voucher program that the financial planners for the Palm Beach County School Board don’t have adequate information to estimate how much the district will receive to operate this year, according to this story in The Palm Beach Post on Saturday. Add to that the additional uncertainty of how much of their capital budgets the Republican-controlled Legislature will require school districts to share with charter schools for construction projects, and the Palm Beach County School District is already projecting it will have to delay four major construction projects previously under consideration: renovations at Roosevelt and Carver High Schools, and construction of a new high school in Riviera Beach and an elementary school in the Westlake area. Universal vouchers and charter schools are both examples of Republicans’ long-discredited practice of privatization in government – of giving money to special interest groups, i.e. private businesses, to handle jobs that governments do better. Privatization has not worked with Florida’s prison system or child welfare system, and now it appears likely to diminish or even destroy the state public education system. The difference, however, is that public education is the cornerstone of democracy – an institution so important to previous generation of Florida’s leaders that the state Constitution requires a “uniform, efficient, safe, secure and high quality system of free public schools.” The operative word, a previous iteration of the state Supreme Court ruled in overturning Jeb Bush’s Opportunity Scholarship vouchers in 2006, was “uniform.” Charter schools and vouchers to private schools do not provide a uniform education, especially when neither of those alternatives are required to meet all the safety standards, much less the educational standards that public school teachers and students must meet. As Palm Beach County Schools Superintendent Mike Burke told The Palm Beach Post about the universal voucher program, “Our principals have advanced degrees, our teachers hold certification and credentials, our facilities are built to codes compliant with the Stoneman Douglas Safety Act, and we have an officer in every school. We’re up to 1,300 pages of Florida school law that we have to follow. Private schools have no regulations… “You are going to diminish resources for the existing public school students. I don’t feel like this is good policy.” The Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, explained the Republicans’ vouchers program, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis on March 27, in even starker transactional terms: a “massive transfer of taxpayer funds to unaccountable, private and religious schools and corporations.” The North County Democratic Club believes that preserving a uniform, high-quality public school system matters as much as any issue in Florida today. Click here to learn more about Moms for Sanity, a program we’re presenting on what parents need to know about school vouchers and other legislation affecting your children’s education.

By Paul Blythe "We are fired up, and ready to go!" our president, Sara Miller, started off. "When I say, 'Fired up,' you say, 'Ready to go!''' "Ready?" she asked, then shouted,"WE ARE FIRED UP!" "And ready to go," we answered in slight disarray. "WHAT? she shouted again. "WE ARE FIRED UP!" "READY TO GO!" we cried in unison, getting the hang of it in just two tries. Sara's Speech: Includes introducing new intern Jordon Vasallo Sara and the rest of the new board of the North County Democratic Club of Palm Beach County started off their tenure with a beach blast Friday evening, commemorating their first monthly meeting by "partying with their party" at Ocean Cay Park in Juno Beach. About 70 dues-paying and new members and guests showed up for good food, smart thinking, great conversation and serious motivation. "Tonight, we are focusing on positive things Democrats can do to get VOTERS TO THE POLLS!" Sara continued in her speech. "The next presidential election is only 18 months away. We have to start working! We have to make a difference! We have to protect things that matter!" "And what matters? "Public schools matter! "Climate change matters! "Freedom from gun violence matters! "Health care matters! "A woman's right to choose matters! "Affordable housing matters! "Protection from soaring insurance prices matters! "Protecting Social Security and Medicare matters! "Protecting equality and inclusion matters! "The right to vote and democracy matter! "WINNING ELECTIONS MATTERS!" Our Party And our party -- the party of 70 or so people gathered together on a beautiful April evening in Florida -- reflected the principles Sara was drumming into our psyches, just as the Democratic Party of Florida does. Sure, we had a lot of oldsters, but our party also had teenagers, millennial couples with toddlers, and Gen Xers. We were white, Hispanic, Asian, and African American. Talking, breaking bread, laughing together. Hanging out together because we value each other. And because we know we need each other. "We have a huge challenge," Sara said. "We need to build an army, and I mean an army of volunteers in advance of the next presidential election cycle. We need every person to join because no one is going to save us. There is no 'they.' The real words are WE, US and TOGETHER. "North County Democrats want to be more than just a club. We want to be the group...that delivers results." And even though Sara made a point of not mentioning that other party, those are the differences between our party and Republicans. We care about others, and we deliver government that delivers results for people, rather than try to dismantle government, tear down the other side and take away long-established rights like a woman's right to choose. Look for QR Codes on Columns But Sara didn't get bogged down in that morass. Instead she pointed to QR codes posted on columns of the pavilion and urged everyone to scan them with their smartphones to update their vote-by-mail status because that status expired for all Florida voters on Dec. 31, due to Republicans, who control the Florida Legislature, passing a law that complicates life for voters by requiring them to renew their vote-by-mail status every two years instead of letting them do it once and be done with it until they decide they don't want to vote that way anymore. Sara reminded folks to check out the fun Democratic buttons and to "be brave enough to wear them" and she handed off the mike for a free raffle of plants symbolizing our party's growth. But not before some famous, favorite last words to bring us full circle. "Now let's get this party started! And show everyone we ARE the North County Democrats, and we ARE...FIRED UP!" To which the crowd replied -- well, you already know... "READY TO GO!"

Courtroom sketch by Jane Rosenberg for @reuterspictures By Paul Blythe Former President Donald Trump was arrested, booked and arraigned Tuesday on 34 New York felony counts of falsifying business records with the intent to defraud and to conceal another crime. Trump himself pleaded not guilty to the counts rather than have his attorneys voice the plea. Otherwise, he was quiet before, during and immediately after the hearing, at least when he was in the public eye. Despite his camp saying he intended to speak to the media before or after he entered the Manhattan courtroom, he arrived at the courthouse for processing at 1:23 p.m. and was led by New York police directly into the courtroom at 2:30 p.m. and directly out at 3:25 p.m. without a peep. FUN UPDATES & KEY THINGS TO KNOW FROM HUFFPOST ABOUT DONALD TRUMP'S EXCITING DAY TRIP TO NEW YORK By 3:28 p.m., his motorcade was on the road to Laguardia Airport, and as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg started to speak at 4:12 p.m., Trump's self-dubbed Trump Force 1 was taxiing on the Laguardia tarmac. The only part of the afternoon that seemed to take longer than expected was the arraignment itself. Expected to last as little as 15 minutes, it lasted 55 minutes but seemed even longer for those of us not in the courtroom and forced to endure the news networks' speculation of what was going on in the room, since no television cameras or electronic devices were allowed to operate inside the courtroom during the hearing. CNN and MSNBC Reporters later explained that the prosecutors complained about a Trump social media post that showed a photo of Trump holding a baseball bat superimposed next to a photo of Bragg's head and asked New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan to warn Trump not to make statements in public or on social media that would incite violence. Trump's lawyers said the ex-president was frustrated by the indictment, but the Merchan said he didn't think the threatening social media post was justified by frustration. The reporters said the judge did not impose a gag order, but did warn both sides to be careful about what they said or posted.

By Paul Blythe Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried and Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book were among demonstrators who were handcuffed and detained Monday night, April 3, at a protest for abortion rights outside Tallahassee City Hall, according to the Tallahassee Democrat and Florida Planned Parenthood Action. The protest and detentions occurred on the same day that the Florida Senate passed a 6-week abortion ban on a largely party line vote. Click here to read more about the Florida Senate vote for the 6-week abortion ban supported by Gov. Ron DeSantis. Opponents of the ban had gathered outside Tallahassee City Hall at 8 a.m. Monday for what they promised to be multiple days of protests in Tallahassee to defend "reproductive freedom." OccupyTally believed it had a city permit for a rally this week, but said it was revoked by officials. The city said it tried to work with the protestors but then realized the group wanted people statewide to come to Tallahassee and occupy the plaza in front of City Hall for an extended period of time, which the city won't permit. Click here to read more details in this Tallahassee Democrat story. Florida Planned Parenthood tweeted videos of the protesters in handcuffs and being led from the city hall property by police, along with this statement: " Please call Mayor John Dailey’s office (850-891-2000 ) and tell him you are disgusted by the arrest of peaceful protestors, including Senator Lauren Book and Nikki Fried, on City Hall property." Click here for video from Florida Planned Parenthood Action tweet. https://www.tiktok.com/@annaforflorida/video/7218004967146163499 Source @annaforflorida